This is pretty much what it says it is: a setting for the sung bits of Holy Communion. I wrote it about 12 years ago, but it’s been languishing ever since, and I thought the time had come to dust it off and make it available to anyone who wants it. For all the PDFs of each item, click here, it’s the first item on the page.
Author: reverendally
Human, parent, priest, (hymn)writer, painter, vegan, amateur. She/they. Chaplain @catz_Cambridge (views my own). Trying to do justly, love mercy & walk humbly.
A hymn for the Easter vigil
A song of Moses and Miriam
a metrical version of the canticle usually used at the Easter Vigil
Tune: Kingsfold (the second part of the tune should be used for the doxology)
O sing aloud to God our strength
whose glory conquers all,
His mighty power has raised us up~
While horse and rider fall.
We sing in worship, for to God
All praise and thanks belong,
Our voices raise the melody
Of our salvation’s song.
This is our God, whom we exalt
Until the world shall end;
The Lord who saved our fathers will
To us his love extend.
He did not leave us in our plight
But to the rescue came,
Our strong defender in the fight,
Jehovah is his name.
His powerful hand has been our shield
And glorious is his might,
And all the hosts of evil now
are shattered at the sight.
The breath divine that gave us life
The mighty flood sets free,
And so the water’s swirling rage
Devours our enemy.
Almighty is the power of God,
His love will never end,
He has redeemed us, set us free,
and leads us by the hand.
And now he brings us to that place
Where we may dwell secure,
The holy house of God shall be
Our haven evermore.
All glory be to God on high,
The Father, Spirit, Son,
To whom we raise the melody
Of our salvation’s song.
The woman at the well (John 4.5-42)
I cannot help but see the woman at the well as a bucket – much like the one she had brought with her to draw water the day she met Jesus.
If she is a bucket, then she is an old and leaky one, full of cracks and holes, barely fit for purpose. At least, that’s how she’d come to see herself, reminded every day by the stares and hostility of her neighbours at her less-than-perfect lifestyle. And an empty bucket, too. Worn down, dried up, and fed up, with nothing to offer. That’s how they see her, so perhaps that’s how she has begun to see herself.
Jesus changes all that. He has no bucket at all with which to draw from the well, yet speaks of living water that can overflow from him to her and from her and bring her life.
Even she would not have dared hope that that living water would have worked such wonders in her so quickly. Indeed, the conversation alone with Jesus has filled her so full of life and hope that, leaving her bucket by the well, she returns to her city and shares what she has experienced with others.
Jesus chose well. He chose a vessel that was broken and cracked, and filled it with life-giving grace and love, knowing that it would leak and spill, and that everywhere it leaked there would be new life and hope, springing and welling up to eternity. For the best witness to grace is not the perfect life but the redeemed life. The leaky broken bucket scatters its water further and more generously than the sealed, watertight bottle.
God has always chosen leaky buckets. When he chose his people, the descendants of Abraham, he chose them not because they were perfect, but because in their weakness his strength would shine through. The Bible reads like a catalogue of God choosing and working with the outcast, the very young and the very old, the unlikely, the poor, the foreigner….
Jesus poured the water of life into the leaky bucket of a Samaritan woman with a questionable past and an even more questionable present. And through her that water of life brought life to a whole city.
Jesus still has no bucket of his own. But he asks us to use ours. We may have the shiniest, most perfect watering can or drinking bottle, or we may, like the Samaritan woman, be full of holes and cracks. A cracked pot will generously spill its precious contents in unexpected and wonderful places, and a small vessel will overflow sooner than a big one…. We come in all shapes and sizes, there is no one perfect pot into which God can pour his love, for with an infinite amount of love being poured, we will all overflow.
May we rejoice in our leaky buckets and our small vessels, but most of all rejoice in the water of life that Jesus will pour into us, so that when we overflow, everyone around us may receive new life.
Hymns for Mothering Sunday
Ages ago I wrote two hymns for Mothering Sunday – if you’re sick of the same old hymns every year and want to try something different, you’re welcome to help yourself to these.
All our blessings
Tune: All things bright and beautiful
All our blessings, all our joys
With thankful hearts we sing,
Lord of life and Lord of love,
Accept the praise we bring.
For parents and for children,
For husbands, wives, and friends,
For those whose care enfolds us
With love that never ends.
For fellowship and friendship
We both receive and give,
For those who’ve shared our journey
And taught us how to live.
For all who’ve shared our sorrow,
Walked with us in our pain,
Who’ve held our hand through darkness
And showed us light again.
In sacrifice and service
Your love is clearly shown,
Your outstretched arms embrace us
to bring us safely home.
For those who give us life and breath
Tune: O Waly Waly
For those who gave us life and breath,
For love that’s stronger far than death,
Today we bring our thankful hearts,
For all a mothering love imparts.
For kindness, patience, warmth and care,
For each embrace, each smile, each tear,
Each word of peace, each healing touch,
These simple gifts which mean so much.
We look to you, our mothering Lord,
Who shows love’s cost, and love’s reward,
Your passion fiercer than the grave,
Nailed to the world you came to save.
So teach your people how to live,
How to endure, how to forgive,
Teach us to trust, to sacrifice,
To share the love that has no price.
Love life live Lent – Thursday 13th March – Be more curious
In Sunday’s gospel reading, we hear the story of Nicodemus sneaking out at night to find Jesus and ask him some big questions. I’d love to start a ‘Nicodemus group’ at some point, as a safe place to ask ‘everything you ever wanted to know about God but were too afraid to ask’. Asking questions and wondering about what’s just beyond what we can understand is one of the big things that sets human beings apart from other bits of God’s creation. The theological Kark Rahner suggested that when God created humanity he placed within us, as part of our make-up, the desire to seek that which is just over the horizon: he made us such that we would want to search for him. Several centuries before, St Anselm had spoken of ‘faith seeking understanding’ – not that understanding replaces faith, but that the very nature of our faith is dynamic, questioning, growing, deepening, engaging all the time more deeply with the God we trust.
Questions are wonderful – in fact, they’re essential – but there are some bits of our faith and theology that are bigger than words can ever quite express. In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus has a good go at putting the love of God into words in John 3.16 (God so loved the world that he sent his only beloved son….), but the truest expression of what those words hinted at can only really be seen in the action of Jesus himself – arms stretched wide on the cross, his silence then is the most eloquent way of saying, “You wanted to know how much I love you? This much.”
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